Saturday, January 17, 2009

Mixing bananas, peanut butter and oats...

It's time for baking another batch of cookies for us to snack on! I thought we still had some cookies hiding deep in the freezer, but much to Jeff's dismay, when he went to pull some out last night for dessert, there were none to be found! Since I had an abundance of bananas in the freezer (overflowing is more like it), I figured it was time to make a dent in that supply... which resulted in these Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Cookies!

To give these cookies a nice chew, a higher proportion of old-fashioned rolled oats to flour is used as part of the dry ingredients for these lower-fat cookies. Speaking of being lighter on the fat side, the cookies only use four tablespoons of butter for the entire batch of 24 cookies thanks to the cup of squishy ripe bananas we used!

When you use moist bananas in cookies like this, you're pretty unlikely to get a crispy cookie anyway, so the fat needed can be lowered a bit without affecting the end result of the cookie. Once the sticky batter for these cookies had been combined, we folded in peanut butter chips because that peanut butter banana combo lures us in every time. Not a fan? Swap those chips out for bittersweet chocolate chunks or even plump raisins if you like them in your oatmeal cookie. If you do use raisins instead, try tossing a quarter to half teaspoon of cinnamon in since though two rock when paired together.

When you have your trays filled with the balls of cookie dough, bake them until the edges of the cookies are golden and they are just set in the center. When you take them out, leave them on the baking sheet for at least two to three minutes to cool before you try and move them off. Even though we used parchment paper, we did find that they wanted to stick a little on the bottom... however a quick slide with a wide spatula did the job and the cookies came off without a problem. The texture of the cookies is soft and moist, but they are not cake-y in any sense - while I thought they might lean a little too much on the sweet side from the ripe bananas and the duo of sugars, it actually was just about right to stand up to those sturdy flakes of plain rolled oats.

9 comments:

  1. Sounds fabulous!

    Courtney

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  2. You take such great pictures of everything, these cookies look great and sound great!!

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  3. Joe, as soon as I saw this recipe I knew I had to make it.

    It's on the counter cooling. I tasted one cookie and it's really good. I did not have the peanut butter chips in the house, so I mixed in some chocolate chips and butterscoth chips.

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  4. Definitely trying this one! Our son picked out bananas at the store. And while I suspect that he will consume all of them (hopefully not in one day), there may be some that will be best eaten in a cookie! I'm tired of banana bread and these look/sound delicious! Thanks for sharing.

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  5. I have to make this cookies they look great.
    Thanks for all the ideas that you give me.

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  6. Courtney - Thanks!

    Bunny - Can we tempt you into trying them though?

    Helene - Fantastic!

    Rachel - I know what you mean about over doing it on banana bread!

    Winnie - I hope you enjoy them.

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  7. Just made these and they are GREAT! Mine didn't quite flatten as much as yours, but I don't care. GREAT banana cookie. I baked about 2 dz. with just pb chips and added about 1/4 cup milk chocolate chips to the rest of the dough. ALL great! Thanks, Joe. (I was tired of my usual banana muffins with overripe bananas.)

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  8. Katrina - Great! I appreciate the feedback and I'm glad to hear they turned out well.

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  9. I had my heart set on peanut butter & banana cupcakes... until I discovered we had no eggs. So I started GoodSearching for a cookie recipe & found your entry. Although it calls for egg, I made some adjustments to incorporate the ingredients I wanted to use. Here's what I came up with:

    2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
    1 cup all-purpose flour
    1/2 teaspoon baking soda
    4 tablespoons light butter, softened
    1/2 cup granulated sugar
    1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
    1 cup mashed ripe banana
    1 teaspoon vanilla
    1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
    1/2 cup chunky peanut butter

    This resulted in a slightly more cake-like cookie that did not spread at all. I flattened out some of them using the bottom of a drinking glass, but found the original "ball" shape to be slightly preferable to the flattened variety. The recipe made about 3 dozen, using a cookie scoop.

    I found this adjusted recipe to be a bit too floury and a bit too heavy on the peanut butter (as compared to the banana). If I were to make them again this way, I'd reduce the flour to about 2/3 cup and reduce the total peanut butter content to 1/2 cup.

    This altered version would also benefit from a drizzle of cream cheese glaze to add a bit of sweet tang, but I didn't go to the trouble this time around.

    Thanks for sharing your recipe, Joe!

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